Halloween Haunts: Aren’t You Too Old for This? Really…?
By James Ryan
I remember how hitting puberty meant being told that I was now too old for Halloween.
Back in those barbaric days, Halloween was confined to kids. The holiday never went as all-out as it does now, with celebrations back then geared for the 11-and-under set. An outfit from Ben Cooper Costumes, usually one of those horrible (and flammable, we’d discover later) one piece affairs with a plastic mask that would suffocate the wearer if the flimsy thin elastic band actually held the thing in place, a bag from the store where your treats from strangers could be collected (and later inspected to make sure that no razor blades, needles, and other nasty surprises were part of the loot, playing a nasty trick on you), and maybe an old Universal monster film getting a special window on TV that night; that was what everyone thought when they heard “Halloween” before John Carpenter came on the scene.
You’d mainly hear “Aren’t you too old for this?” if you were anyone trying to join the trick or treaters, standing maybe a head taller than the rest of the crew. The look on the face of the person at the door, wondering why they bought candy and were giving it to someone who could probably walk to the store themselves to get their own damn treats, that told you where people’s thoughts were about the whole affair.
You couldn’t consider where the day came from then, lest the marketing folk get upset that you might possibly be disrupting the costume-and-candy trade. In houses like the ones I knew, there’d be the reminder that when the night was over, it’d be time to get ready for All Saints Day come sunrise, with the implication that November 1st was the real deal, not any of that other stuff. If ever there was a demonstration of the whole “Church cooption” aspect of Samhain, it was lived in such places.
It would be years later that I would get my hands on more details. Like finding out more about Samhain, the Celtic harvest festival where the veil between realms would slip and allow the dead to visit us. Or how Christians in other parts of Europe would use this time before heading into November 2nd, All Souls Day, to get the faithful to remember those that have died. Or discovering “Dia de los Muertos,“ the Mexican holiday that falls a few days later that closely resembles Halloween, which may have had roots in Aztec beliefs, during which the living visited the deceased with a picnic.
You take a step back as you get the information together, and you find certain commonalities, like death. It acknowledges that life ends, sometimes before we finish what we’re trying to do in the here and now. It runs throughout with warnings about getting too close to those spirits and haunts you might find this night, believing that the dead should only be spoken to on All Souls Day the way we’d absent-mindedly text someone out of the blue without expecting a reply. And it tries to “other” the dead, make us fear them and not get too close, as you don’t want to end up like them, do you…?
Decay also plays a role in the holiday. We get such tropes as the haunted house that’s falling apart, the skeleton that remains once the flesh is gone, the graveyard that’s overgrown. Just about anything discarded and forgotten that never gets any attention becomes a central setting or even a plot element in and of itself in a lot of Halloween tales.
There’s also the theme of darkness, and the way it claims the light. That time of year is around forty days between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice, right when most people are going to realize that they should have gotten their crops in and livestock wintered by now. It’s the time when lights are needed to get home at the end of the day, trees lose their crowns, and signs of seasonal affective disorder start to show. (The fact that there’s another “40” involved among other occurrences in Judeo-Christian tradition probably merits note, too…)
Which raises an interesting question: Is Halloween, like youth, wasted on the young…?
Its themes of death, decay, and darkness certainly resonate strongly with those closer to the end of their lives than the beginning. For those who have over the years felt their own decay, not being able to do what they once did, darkening their moods as they come closer to death, the themes of the holiday strike a strong chord among folks who are later on in their life, as they find (or try to avoid) these aspects in their existence. For such people, Halloween isn’t a one night affair, but a constant.
The old assumptions that Halloween should be restricted to children who are not going to die anytime soon (despite our inability to really protect them, but that’s another topic for another time…) is like trying to sell skis in July or beachwear in January. It misses the point and limits its message and theme in ways to keep it away from an audience that would appreciate it better than the demo it’s being marketed to.
Thankfully, that attitude’s changed. We no longer think of Halloween as something you grow out of. We’ve gone way beyond and abandoned Ben Cooper Costumes, although the whole “sexy <fill in the blank> costume” phenomenon has its issues. We’ve got whole online channels devoted to scary cinema, good and bad, throughout the year.
The deeper meanings of the holiday can’t and shouldn’t be buried, and we can and should talk about them openly with people from all age groups. And yeah, you’re now no longer too old to ask someone for candy…
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James Ryan has published the novels Raging Gail, Red Jenny and The Pirates Of Buffalo, and Statues To Silence; a collection of stories from Rooftop Sessions entitled Alt Together Now, and the monograph The Pirates of New York. His recent stories have also appeared in the anthologies Gabba Gabba Hey! , Trees, The Fans are Buried Tales, Conspiracies and Cryptids Volume I, Ruth and Ann’s Guide To Time Travel Volume I, Dragon Mythicana, and Toil and Trouble. His column “Fantasia Obscura” about obscure older fantastic films and their modern context runs at Forces of Geek. His links can be reached through https://linktr.ee/jdanryan.